Short of being a leading e-tailer or super-famous, advertising is not counted among the ways we can earn substantial sums of passive income from the Web. Note the word substantial. Piddling sums are common. Substantial sums are not and it takes tenacity to make that happen. But I don’t have all the answers. There are thousands of professionals more on top of this game than I. [1]

This Hubber posted an excellent article about AdWords. There’s also more from other Hubbers about making money from advertising and on HubPages itself. Incidentally, I’m using the term AdWords somewhat generically because Google was and still is a leader in this but the Google model is no longer an end-all.

NO NEED TO REINVENT THE WHEEL: What I’m expert at is projecting future trends based on following industries in the forefront. Over the past few years my focus has been on how converging technologies will impact book sales and in turn, how we might use advertising to enhance passive income.

Although everyone knows this but just to make sure we’re all on the same page, “converging technologies” means I can read, study, research or be entertained as I move from my computer to my TV to my cell phone without a hiccup—anytime from anywhere. The hardware is interchangeable and before long will be holographic.

NEW MARKETING LAYERS: Stop and think about this future for a moment. It opens up marketing layers we’ve not thought of yet. And with these new layers comes advertising opportunities beyond AdWords and the like for our books. One example is homebound learners from the very young to our great grandparents. Another example might be employee training, yet another might be foreign languages encased in world history or even novels.

THE POINT: How do we capture income at the moment and grow into the future? For starters, it isn’t possible to be known to all people in all things. We must pick a genre and stick with it to make any headway.

HERE’S WHY: Branding your expertise with a book, perhaps several books, will build a following regardless of the portal or social network you are using. As it evolves, you’ll evolve.

• Followers beget brand recognition
• Brand recognition begets industry recognition
• Industry recognition opens doors to publishing in magazines, ezines, etc.
• Magazines, ezines , etc., beget guest spots on webinars and teleseminars
• Webinars and teleseminars beget more hits on your blogs, websites
• More hits move you up in the ranks among search engines
• And THIS attracts advertisers’ therefore passive income

Just do a little bit every day. It’s extraordinarily rare someone takes the world by storm and turns it upside down. It certainly isn’t impossible that you might be that rare person and have publishers fighting over your book—called going to auction—providing you haven’t self-published by then. To understand more about self-publishing please refer to my earlier Hub entitled How Authors Expand Their Markets.

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[1] Yes, it’s “I” not “me” as any English major will tell you. The way to tell whether this abused use of English is “me” or “I” is by completing the sentence. In this instance, the completion word is “am.” It is “I am” not “me am.” Having said this, I’m taking my fingernails off of the tin roof now.